Pinewood Derby 2012

 Our Elder's Quorum had their annual Pinewood Derby.  This is the first time I have ever participated in the Pinewood Derby, and kind of learned what it was.  I don't think I had even heard of it till last year when Nate participated in it, and this year was a family activity, so we all were invited!!  The boys helped Daddy make his car, which he cheated on by buying a premade one from the store instead of using a saw and tools to shape a rectagular block of wood.  He put eyes on it to match the kind of eyes the cars have in the Pixar movie "CARS," and named his car "The Humble Rider."  He drilled a hole through the car and inserted tiny alarm system magnets into the center of the block to make it more heavy.  When the kids at the derby saw that regular magnets stuck to Nate's car, they couldn't figure out how they stuck to wood!  It was pretty funny!  It still qualified for the weight limit, and actually did win as "The Heaviest Car!"

Date Nights...

Nate and I love our Date Nights!!  We try to make sure they happen at least once every couple weeks.  We are both so very involved in work and kids all day that we look forward to our date nights so much!  This particular date night we went ice skating with some friends from our ward.  It was a lot of fun!  We realized as we were skating that the last time both of us had skated was at Seven Peaks back in Provo, UT when we had just been dating.  That was a good 8 or 9 years ago!! Holy Cow! Has it really been that long since I skated!  Yep, it has.  Wow, how time just flies.  We had a lot of fun, but couldn't stop thinking about how fun it would be to bring the kids next time we came!

 A couple weeks later, we did another thing that neither of us had done since probably high school!  We went and played laser tag!!  It also was a ton of fun!  We went with our friends Cathleen & Keith, who really made it a fun night!  Once again, though, we couldn't stop thinking about how much fun the boys would have at something like this!!  We'll have to bring them when they are a bit older!!  It's silly how we go on our date nights, but the main thing we are talking about and thinking about the whole time, are our little ones at home.  We are so grateful for them, and for each other, and for our happy little family!  Date nights always help us remember this.  :-)

Disney's Magic Kingdom: Pirates of the Caribbean

We were advised to not miss the Pirates of the Caribbean performance with Captain Jack Sparrow.  So we fit it into our busy day and were so glad we did!!  We were some of the first to arrive at the set, and while sitting down eating a snack and waiting for the pirate performance to begin, one of the pirate workers asked Jaxton to help him secure the rope around where the audience had to stay behind.  He was thrilled to help with this pirate job!  

 And then, once Captain Jack Sparrow arrived on the set, an actor completely transformed to look just like Johnny Depp in the movie, he called out for volunteer pirates to help him out and learn how to fight!  Cooper and Jaxton raised their hands high.  Since we were towards the front, his eyes rested on the little boy blue and he called Cooper up!  Cooper has showed lots of shyness lately, so I was very surprised that he went up there.  Nate and I both thought he would get fearful and decide to just come sit back down, or start crying and running off once he saw the audience that had accumulated!  But he didn't!  He was sooo brave out there!  Captain Jack Sparrow had called up 4 kids, of which Cooper was the very tiniest to say the least.  But brave he was!!

 Captain Jack Sparrow and his pirate friend helped each volunteer pirate learn how to fight with a sword.  They gave the kids some techniques, allowed them to practice for a moment, and then each child got a chance to pretend to actually fight!  They fought the other pirate while Captain Sparrow helped them on the sidelines, reminding them which sword move to do when.  Cooper listened, learned, and performed like a pro!  Captain Jack Sparrow loved him!  And Cooper was oh so proud!!

 After our pirate adventure, we went on the ride, Pirates of the Caribbean.  It was super fun!  A Disneyworld classic!  After the ride, we were walking past the pirate show which had begun again. (It went every hour or so and the line for the ride had taken about that long!)  As we were walking by, Cooper really wanted to go talk to Captain Jack Sparrow.  He and Jack had become great friends, so Cooper thought.  So Nate put Cooper on his shoulders so he was high above all the other spectators, and Cooper waved his arms ferociously to get Captain Jack's attention.  Indeed it worked, and in the middle of his show, he waved to Cooper and said, "Helloww Cooper!"  Cooper just beamed!

Disney's Magic Kingdom: Highlights

 The kids got to ride in the NASCAR car races!  The cars are on a track so they can't get off the road, and there's bumpers, even though we were advised not to bump!  They both were still too short to qualify to drive, but they each got to push the gas pedal while we steered.  It was a lot of fun!  Cooper rode with Grandpa, Jaxton rode with me, and Nate got to drive on his own!!  Fun times!!

 Here are Grandma & Cooper wearing their 3D glasses getting ready to watch the well renowned "Fantasmic!"  It truly was amazing with the most enormous movie screen we've ever seen, 3D images, and a few fun tricks they did on us.  We got squirted with water somehow when Donald Duck jumped in the river, and at the end, as Donald was trying to escape, the show ended and we saw his behind get stuck in the back theater wall and then disappeared.  Definitely more than just a movie!! It was neat!

The boys are way into Toy Story, so the Toy Story Buzz Lightyear ride was a huge hit!  The kids actually got to handle a laser gun and attempted to shoot at Zurg throughout the ride.  They got some kind of score at the end of how many times they hit Zurg as they went through the ride.  It was super fun!  Even Kaylee was excited to see all the bright neon lights and cool sounds!!

Disney's Magic Kingdom: Tom Sawyer Island

 The highlight of Disney's Magic Kingdom was Tom Sawyer Island.  I remember loving it when I was a kid, and indeed, the kids all loved running around exploring the island!  We had to take a small ferry raft across from the main street over the lake to the island.  Once there, we found a fun playground and a very clostrophobic pitch dark underground cave.  Of course we had to go through the cave several times since it was so neat!  And Kaylee loved being able to walk around and explore the playground on her own a little bit!  

 Next, we encountered a rickety bridge that jostled and wiggled at each step, as if Tom Sawyer had made it himself.  The boys thought this was super fun! The pictures don't do it justice how awkward and wiggly the bridge was, it was tough to walk on, especially with a baby in my arms!!  We had to go over the bridge several times as well!  

 We crossed a real bridge to the other side of the island and found Tom Sawyer's fort.  It was a huge fort with look out points on all sides and corners.  And this was the most exciting place of all for the boys.  Each lookout point had rifle guns that were available for the kids to maneuver around and made shooting noises, as if they were shooting at bad guys from their fort!  Jaxton and Cooper went from look out point to look out point trying out every rifle!  For a while, Jaxton seemed to have disappear, but he was just hiding away in one corner, keeping an eye out for bad guys and trying the rifle out on trees and birds!!  It felt so real!!  We could have spent all day just at this one fort!!

 Since the fort was all enclosed on the upper level, Kaylee got to go walking on her own around the perimeter of the fort.  She loved the freedom and really enjoyed herself!!

 This "Escape Tunnel" took us out to the outer side of the island rock!  It was a tunnel/ cave-like trail that was pretty dark, apparently used by Tom Sawyer and his gang to escape when trouble came to the fort!  :-).  This was pretty fun!!

 Here we are on the ferry raft floating across the lake to Tom Sawyer's Island.

Disney's Magic Kingdom

 Disney's Magic Kingdom, the ultimate Kingdom of Disneyworld.  When people think of Disneyworld, this is what comes to mind.  The Magic Castle.  Similarly, when people come to Disneyworld, this is the first park of choice for everyone in the world.  Crowded? Yes!  Magical?  Yes!!  We could have spent a week here!  This park was definitely at our kids level, and they loved every minute of it!  We had beautiful weather and fast passes made our day totally successful in being able to see and do just about everything we intended to, despite the crowds.  Here we stand at the Magical Castle, where every dream comes true!!!

 Kaylee, our little princess in front of the Magic Kingdom castle.  One day we will have to return and experience the princesses at Disneyworld to lighten up her little world.  She is our princess!

 One of Jaxton's most favorite events, he said, was this show that took place on the castle.  It featured all the major princesses, as well as Mickey Mouse and friends.  Peter Pan and Captain Hook even surprised us with a battle on the castle grounds!  It was pretty exciting!

 Right after this show we were able to eat at the Crystal Palace, an American buffet style restaurant in a crystal-like beautiful building.  Food was amazingly great!!  The kids got to see Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet there.  Of course Kaylee wouldn't have anything to do with them though! 

 After our meal, we came outside to loud music and found this parade going on.  What fun! The boys were excited to see Woody up on the float, and they couldn't get over the characters and super tall stilts.  We had a whole lot of fun at this park!!

Disney's Epcot Park: Imagination Stations

Epcot was filled with areas of hands on activities. This was great for the kids because the lines were hard for them. They really enjoyed exploring and touching all sorts of interesting and unique things. Cooper claimed that his other favorite thing from Disneyworld came from Epcot at the "Great Piggy Adventure." It is a long piggy bank extravaganza to help kids learn the importance of spending and saving money and budgeting. Each child gets their own large pink piggy bank which they "fill" by completing each station or game. Each station has an activity that they get to manually manage themselves with some kind of touchscreen TV or big buttons to push. Our kids were a little young to fully grasp the ideas, but the purpose was to help them sort their earnings into different "accounts" to save for things that were important and lose money when their efforts allowed for petty spending. The boys just loved pushing buttons and feeling like they were playing giant video games! After each station, the piggy bank would go into a little door while it "filled up" with money. When they would open the door and take it out, the piggy bank would get heavier and heavier. At the very end, they would "weigh in" and see whether they earned their initial goal or not, and then it took that piggy bank away for another player to use. Cooper was thoroughly disappointed when he did not get his piggy bank back. He totally thought it was his to keep. We'll have to get him a real pink piggy bank for Christmas or his next birthday!

The other imagination hands on areas were also a lot of fun. There were sensory areas where the kids could use their senses to explore. Cooper loved running from one square to the next as they lit up with a neon light! And Kaylee loved the neat stars shining on her and daddy!

There was a weather and natural disaster area where the kids got to see a tornado pick up a mini house. They also got to work on planning for a natural disaster by doing some emergency preparation. They organized all the supplies they would need to have ready in case a disaster or emergency struck. That was a lot of fun and re-emphasized what we are working on at home!